The Book of Lost Poisons
by WitheredCarnation
Summary: Based on The Final Chapter. While browsing a garage sale, Sara and Samantha find an empty diary with a bloody history. What is the connection between Sara and the diary's previous owner?


The Book of Lost Poisons

Withered Carnation

The diary wasn't found.

During the night's festivities, it had fallen from its perch on a boxy dresser, under a dismal little lamp with just enough power to cast shadow, deepening the texture of its Valenciennes lace cover while stripping the shine from the silk beneath. That lamp had been recovered. Every bloody piece of light bulb, every frayed wire had been rooted from various hiding spots around the room and collected as evidence. The broken dresser had been removed. There was a dusty paisley rug beneath the dresser that had also been rolled up. But the diary itself remained wedged between the upper and lower floors of the two-story vacation home, unknown and unmissed.

Only three people knew it existed, and all of them were dead.

ooo

Sara didn't know how she'd let Teddy talk her into this, she thought as she examined the weathered brown roller skates like the foreign objects they were to her, especially since it had been years since he'd tried to talk her into anything. Sixth grade, she thought, was when he'd stopped calling, when he'd stopped inviting her to movies, when he'd stopped dropping by her locker and walking to class with her. Yesterday, he'd called out of the blue and asked her to the Roller-Cade. She knew she should have said no. She knew he'd only invited her because he was going with friends and didn't have a date, and that it would be just as much in his best interests to refuse as hers; at a skating rink, no date at all would be better than Sara, who had trouble enough staying upright without giant wheels strapped to her feet. At least then he wouldn't feel obligated to linger around her creaky wooden bench and entertain her while his brightly-colored friends glided under the camera-flashing strobe lights.

"And that's a size five for the lady," Teddy said, kneeling beside her and helping her into the heavy skate. At least, he tried. One of his billowy sleeves got stuck on a grommet and they both worked to untangle it without tearing it. That was one thing she couldn't get over, the way he liked to dress these days: loud prints in colors that didn't even pretend to try to match, with a pair of sunglasses perched omnipresently on his spiked black hair. Still, she didn't want to ruin his clothes, even if she didn't quite understand their appeal.

"I can't believe you still remember my shoe size after all this time," She said, trying to tighten the laces.

"I didn't have to," Teddy said. "I've got my own personal computer. It's very handy for keeping important facts and trivia in an easily-accessible format."

Sara heard, but was distracted by something whirling under the lights on the skating floor as if dancing with them. "She's magnificent."

There were a lot of good skaters, but the one she couldn't take her eyes off was a natural performer, almost like an Olympic skater Sara had seen on television. Rhinestones on her jeans flashed as she banked; her brunette hair flew as she leapt, skating backwards as she landed. Teddy raised his glasses appreciatively.

"Yes, she is!"

Sara rolled her eyes. She'd be the first person to applaud if Teddy began to show an appreciation for fine arts, but somehow, she didn't think it was the statuesque woman's technique he was admiring. "You were saying? About your computer?"

"Oh, yeah!" He said. "It's right here." Teddy spread his fingers theatrically, glanced to the side to make sure Sara was watching him, then began to tick-tick-tick his fingers in the open air. "See? I can call up your entry in an instant. Crews, Sara. Age: Fifteen. Height: Five feet, one inch. Weight..."

She elbowed him.

"None of Ted's damn business," He laughed.

"The computer's got that right."

"It's a masterpiece of engineering and technology. The computer is always right. So do you remember what size my shoes are? No? I'm hurt."

"I remember you getting the flu and getting sick all over them."

"It's not my fault they're so hard to miss. You know what they say about guys with big roller skates?"

"No," Sara said, as she finished lacing the calf-high rental.

He stood. "You wouldn't. So, are you feeling up to a walk-around?"

Sara could feel herself pale, which considering how pale she was naturally, must be making her almost invisible. "I don't know anybody."

"You're not gonna fix that on the bench. Come on. We can go slow. You'll be fine."

Sara got shakily to her feet. The wheels rolled beneath her. Teddy tried to keep her from shaking ,and she was suddenly aware what kind of figure she must cut next to him, all skin, bones, white clothing, and unbound shoulder-length hair that was not so much red as translucent white with a tangerine center. Teddy looked like he belonged in a music video. Sara looked like she belonged in a hospital. She was about to do what she should have done about this whole escapade (refuse), when the phenomenal brunette skater stopped in front of both of them.

She looked from Teddy to Sara, and Sara went from invisible to bright red. Strangers always did this to her, even the most innocuous ones, and this one was not innocuous at all. Up close, she was even more glamorous and more intimidating than she had been in the rink. Especially when it became obvious it was Sara she was scrutinizing.

"Perfect," She said finally and, relieving the shocked Teddy of Sara's shoulder, dragged her onto the floor.

It took Teddy's computer a moment to process what had happened, and then another to remember he probably ought to do something about it. By the time he stammered, "No, wait, that's not such a good idea," they were both gone.

The skater wasn't listening, anyway. She took Sara's other hand and, before she could protest, spun her as if this was a dance floor. Teddy was still trying to push his way to Sara's side, but she stopped trying to catch sight of him. This was like being on a merry-go-round, with colors and shapes blurring past her before she could identify them. Bewildering at first, it had suddenly become a lot of fun, and Sara laughed. She threw back her head and laughed harder than she had in years.

Then she fainted.

As she, Teddy, and his friends tried to revive Sara in the parking lot, the skater said her name was Samantha.

ooo

No matter how nicely Teddy put it, no matter what fancy names her various doctors gave it, Sara could only think of herself as a born wimp. Not, mind you, that she thought of this as a liability. While the children in the incubators on either side of her grew into soccer games and coloring books, she grew into a bigger hospital bed, from which she could sometimes see them playing, tumbling in the lush, waving grass. She knew she was supposed to be jealous, but she only winced in empathy with each knock they took, certain even as they smiled that they could not really mean it, that the bruises and scraped-away skin had to hurt, that laughing louder wasn't making the pain lesser. The sight of the blood or raw flesh made her queasy even from the distance, behind the glass. Joining in these games was as unthinkable to Sara as standing on Mars without a spacesuit.

Teddy had been much the same way when she first met him, or at least she' thought so; maybe she'd just wanted someone else on her side of the glass, and had projected that kid onto the boy wheeled into the bed next to her with a broken leg. It wasn't an unusual injury, but his was an unusual story. He'd been walking with his mother to a grocery store a few blocks away from his apartment (which was, in turn, a few blocks away from the Distant Meadows addition where Sara lived), and he'd stopped in front of an electronics store to stare at the radio kit displayed in the window. His mother turned to find out where he'd gone; only, when she looked back, he was sitting on the cracked sidewalk, holding his leg. What she and Sara found later was that he'd tried to open the door for a better look, and a customer in a hurry had bowled past him. When he'd tried to jump out of the man's way, Teddy's heel hadn't gone with the rest of him; it had gotten caught in a particularly large, jagged crevice. Hence, he tumbled, and the bone snapped. He didn't cry. He just stared, bewildered.

That was the only thing about Teddy that hadn't changed, but as far as Sara knew, she was the same person now that she had been then, preoccupied with pain, and always looking for new ways to avoid it.

ooo

The sun hovered, timid and tangerine, behind a misty cloud as Sara flipped through a glossy magazine. She wasn't reading it, but she couldn't exactly say she was looking at the pictures, either; at least, none of them were very interesting. It was the sound and the motion, she guessed, the pretense of having something to do while her grandfather picked up her prescriptions at the counter. A purchase that might have taken only a few minutes could stretch indefinitely when made by the chatty old man, who seemed to have a long, personal friendship with everyone he encountered behind any of the town registers. Not that Sara minded. It was nice to be out and browsing without obligation. No obligation to buy, no obligation to think... just flip, flip, flip...

Until the sound of a heated argument, muffled by the distance and the half-opened door, set her brain to working. One of those voices, Sara recognized; and like any voice one recognizes but cannot immediately match to a face, it nagged her. She didn't have to wait long to discover its owner, however. The door of the next building slammed, and into view stomped Samantha, throwing a balled-up, greasy apron to the balled-up, greasy sidewalk with a shrill, "I QUIT!"

"I'm going to step outside for a few minutes, Grandpa. I see a friend of mine," Sara said.

"Be careful of the sun," He said.

But the sun was hazy and harmless-looking enough.

"Samantha?" Sara called.

Samantha started at hearing her name, then turned abruptly. "Oh! It's the roller-rink girl! Did I say I was sorry about that last night?"

Sara didn't remember. The whole scene was fuzzy as she'd heard a hangover could be. She nodded 'yes' anyway, because she was sure Samantha would have. "It's okay."

"Your friend was trying to tell me you can't take a lot of excitement. I didn't think about that, I just thought you looked like a girl I used to skate with at my old school, and that your dress would be pretty on the floor. I didn't mean for you to faint. I've never seen anyone faint before, except in the movies. The real thing didn't look like very much fun."

It was even less fun when it happened in art and you lost consciousness in a wet pottery and woke up with a face full of terra cotta, but Sara wouldn't dream of saying something like that. It took more courage than she knew she had just to get the "Samantha" and the "it's okay" through her lips. She didn't know what else she ought to say. "You worked at the Breaded Rooster?"

"Accent on the past tense," Samantha said. "What a train wreck. The hours were crap, the work was dangerous and under-supervised, the pay was embarrassing, and the boss wouldn't stop hitting on me. Every time I emptied the fryer, there he was with some new comment about how great my ass looked bent over the drain. I can't believe I put up with it for as long as I did."

"How long were you there?" Sara asked, eyes wide.

"Two weeks. Guess I won't be getting a very good reference. Do you know anywhere else I could put in an application?"

At this point, Samantha might as well be speaking classical Latin. Sara had never had a paying job in her life, something she was uncomfortable with. She tried, though. "Teddy- Ted, I mean- works at a maintenance place. Not cars, but appliances. Do you know anything about electronics?"

"I can turn on the television. Does that count?"

Sara didn't notice she was drifting. Samantha had begun walking, so she'd walked along with her. Now the pharmacy stretched behind her, its flapping awning zagging off into the horizon.

"I didn't even know you were allowed to operate fryers at our age."

"That's what I said to him. I think it's illegal. I'm _pretty sure_ it's illegal. But a little hot grease doesn't scare me. Hey, are you going to pass out again?"

"Do I look like I'm going to?" This wasn't sarcasm. It was possible Sara did look like she was going to pass out again, and if that were the case, probable she would.

"That's not it. I saw a few garage sales up the street. Want to come look at them with me? Nothing takes the sting off a lost job like shopping with money you don't have. You can tell me what kind of school I'm going to be in next month, what there is to do around here..."

Sara was the last person who would know any of this, but she couldn't bring herself to say as much. All she could get out was, "I'll have to tell Grandpa where I'm going."

ooo

There was plenty of time for Sara's dread of her impossible task to mount. In the lively "conversation" that followed, Samantha did all the talking. The two of them walked the tables in the shadow of a yellow house, its vinyl siding warped with age and heat. No matter what random bric-a-brac they encountered, no matter how melted the candles, how illegible the postcards from Camp Crystal Lake, how cracked the coffee mugs or incomplete the toys, Samantha could think of something to say about them. "Ooh, this bowl has scorch marks! Do you think it was saved from a fire?" (More likely a microwave, Sara thought, but did not say). "Check out this dancing, singing mermaid! Isn't she cute?" "Look at the size of these shorts! Nobody here looks like they could keep them around their hips. Whose do you think they are?" Sometimes, if something really amused her, Samantha could chat on it at length. Sara was happy to let her.

"I found a teddy bear!" Samantha swept the ragged toy from the table. Sara half-smirked, half-winced. Teddy's mom used to call him Teddy Bear; it had been her little nickname for him. _I remembered that,_ she thought. Did he? Maybe that would be something interesting to tell Samantha. Before she could think about that any more, she noticed the bear had been sitting on something.

It looked like a wedding album, the book with its silken binding and white lace cover, netted delicately over the cloth. What a thing to hide under a toy bear's raggedy tail! Sara picked it up. Was this junk from a messy divorce, maybe? Or was this not supposed to be sold at all? Had it only gotten mixed up with these other things? Sara opened it. There were no pictures. No signatures. No ribbons or invitations. The pages were blank and smooth, without even lines to write on or glue to hold photographs. Sara closed it and turned it over in her hands. "It's so pretty, though."

"Girl who owned it was about your age, too."

Sara jolted. Approaching the table was an old lady, her glasses as thick as river water and about as clear, her dress more of a floral-printed pillowcase than anything else. It was the same color as the vinyl on the house.

"About your age, she was, and a frail little thing. Couldn't go for walks like the other girls, not without getting sick and sunburned and spending the rest of her day in bed. Well, back then, everyone knew someone was sick like that, what they needed was fresh country air. So, even though her parents were dirt-poor and couldn't afford it, they scraped up all they had and went to the Crystal Lake campgrounds, all three of them. Rented a summer cabin, fixed her up in a nice, airy room."

"I've always wanted to go there," Samantha said. "Did it work?"

"You mean, was she healed? In no time at all. The longer she stayed at the campgrounds, the stronger she became. Everyone knows there's something about that lake, something older than the land around it, and there are more stories about it than you could fit in there," The old lady gestured to the diary, "But they ain't all bad stories. It was there she got that journal. Some local seamstress made the cover by hand, leftover cloth from a wedding dress I think, bound it over an old sketchbook."

"But nobody wrote anything in it."

"'Course not. The girl died."

Sara froze, her hand stuck turning a page. "I thought she got better."

"A week before she was about to go back home," The old lady said, "Something went wrong with the camp's drinking water. Her cure turned out worse than her disease. The poison killed her parents, one after the other, in no time at all. But the girl lingered, her newfound strength ebbing painfully and slowly away, refusing to let her join them. In the end, the frailest was the last to go."

Sara and Samantha both watched the silky book as if they expected it to open up and speak for itself.

"No fair," Samantha said, "You said this wasn't a bad story!"

"No I didn't. I said not all of them were. This one's bad. Very bad, I'd say."

"I hope ours will be better, then," Samantha reached into her pocket. "We have to have this. How much do you want for it? I don't see a sticker on it. It's for sale, isn't it?"

"Wasn't going to be, but now that it's out here, I see no reason to keep it. They were the last owners of this house, no relations of mine. It's worth nothing to me. Well, maybe ten cents."

Samantha dumped out some change and began to search the pile. She located a nickel, some pennies, a quarter...

"Here," Sara said, holding out another nickel. "We each pay half!"

"Great idea! Then it'll really be for both of us. That's a nickel from me, a nickel from Sara... oh, and here's a quarter. I want the bear, too."

Payment accepted, the old lady waddled off to look after other customers. Samantha stuffed the huge teddy bear under her arm, leaving Sara holding the white diary.

Samantha watched her disappear into a crowd of people her own age. "So. Think that's true, or just some BS she made up to get us to buy it?"

Sara shrugged. "I don't know." She brushed her hand over the silk and Valenciennes binding. "It looks like it could have come from a wedding dress."

"My money's on 'BS she made up,' personally."

"It was a pretty story."

"I'd have asked for more money, if it had been me," Samantha said.

As they walked, they browsed the diary's empty pages as if re-reading the tale they'd just heard.

Of course, the pages were still empty. Later, in the park, as the two of them lay in the grass, they discussed what should be written there.

"We could start with the roller-skating," Sara suggested. "How did you learn to do it so well?"

"Oh, _that._ I wanted to be a ballerina. I think everyone does at some point."

"Every girl, you mean." Which wasn't true. Sara never wanted to be a ballerina. The shoes looked uncomfortable. Their boomerang curves put Sara in mind of old pictures of women who'd bound their feet so they'd stop growing.

"How do you know guys don't, too, and are just better at hiding it? Anyway, I took ballet lessons. It didn't work out. It's not that I wasn't good. You've seen me. You know I'm good. You also know I'm not Thumbelina, and there gets a point where the teachers stop pretending you don't have to be. I wasn't going to switch styles. I was going to have exactly what I wanted, or nothing at all. So I stopped dancing and started skating, instead." She sulked. "But why would I want to write _that?_ It has to be bigger. The first entry will be the most important. If the diary is all we leave behind, it'll be what tells the world we're worth remembering."

Wasn't everyone worth remembering, at least to the people who cared about them? Sara had to admit, though, that this was not a subject she often thought about. For a girl who was sick all the time, Sara was amazed how little she'd reflected on her own mortality. She couldn't make her mind take those morose paths while she was surrounded by the bland half-tended gardens and homes of Distant Meadows. "That must also leave out going to garage sales. What about the old lady's story?"

"It's not about us. That defeats the purpose."

"What do you define as 'big?'"

"Did you have any car accidents recently? I just mean, it ought to be that jarring."

Nothing that jarring ever happened to Sara, and she said as much.

"We'll just have to wait until something does, then," Samantha said. Rolling onto her stomach, she folded her arms under her chin. Suddenly, she was very serious, her mouth a thin, grave line, or would have been without her pink lipstick. "But there's one thing I won't allow. It can't be anything we made up. That's like lying, and I don't like lying. Or liars."

She was so sober as she said this, Sara had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. She knew that would be offensive. Yet, even though she hadn't known Samantha for long, she knew there was something in her that didn't match serious. This new face clashed as badly as the colors in Teddy's printed shirts. "Okay," Sara said.

"Promise me. Nothing but the truth."

"Nothing but the truth, just like in court."

Just like that, the shadow went away, and Samantha abruptly plucked a blade of grass and blew on it, letting a loud, rude sound rip through the silence. "Take it home with you for now," She said, gesturing to the book. "See if you can think of something to write. Just remember, it belongs to both of us."

ooo

Crystal Lake wasn't always bad, the old lady said. But it could be. For Sara, it would be. The endless forest and the bottomless water would show her as ugly a side as it had the journal's last owner. Perhaps, on the other hand, Sara could be considered slightly luckier than the girl who fought so hard and valiantly before dying. Sara would not have to suffer like that. Sara would be given no reason to hope before she was spirited away to that place they all went, sooner or later.

ooo

Inevitably, Sara spent the evening smearing cream on her scalded face and arms. She had two settings: papery and charred. She could never figure out how to find tan between them.

Face, arms, and knees white, Sara sat on her bed and regarded the open diary. The pages hadn't written anything poignant on themselves while she and Sam were brainstorming. Now that she was by herself, the project seemed even more ridiculous and impossible. Obviously, she and Samantha differed in their definition of "journal." To Sara, a journal was a place to scribble whatever came to mind. It didn't have to be clever, carry any weight, or even make sense, because it wasn't supposed to be read. What Samantha was talking about sounded more to Sara like a newspaper. Still, she'd seen diaries in the pharmacy: diaries of dead princesses, diaries of coke-head celebrities, diaries of nobodies who'd been found and deemed interesting enough to share the shelves with dead princesses and coke-head celebrities. Perhaps Sara should read one of those for inspiration. At least, they might give her some idea what Samantha was looking for.

A tap at the window, like a single raindrop, and the diary spilled from Sara's lap and fluttered to the floor like some paper butterfly. Was someone breaking in? There were stories on the news these days about cultists breaking into peoples' homes and making human sacrifices of them (a ghoulish thought she attributed to Samantha's bad influence), and whether that was true or not, there were always robbers. Sara and her grandpa, the only occupants of the house, would look like easy targets to either one. Yet as Sara waited, wondering what she could possibly do if this meant danger (other than faint), the sound came again.

Not breaking. Knocking.

Sara unlatched the window, and into her room flopped Teddy. Flopped and sprawled on the carpet, just like a fish out of a bowl, a moment before rocking into something resembling a sitting position. The glasses stayed right on his head the whole time. _What, are they sewn in place?_

Of all the things Sara was thinking ("are you all right" was one of them), what she ended up asking was, "Why are you in my _window?"_

"I wanted to check on you after last night, but when I came over this morning, you were gone. I waited around for a bit, but your grandfather came home without you. He said you were still in town. So I went to town, but I couldn't find you. When I came back, your gramps fell asleep on the sofa and I didn't want to wake him up, so I came through the window, like they always do in the movies.

_Which would be very impressive, indeed, if this weren't a single-story house,_ Sara thought. "You didn't have to go to all that trouble," was what she said.

"But what happened? You look like someone ran you through a pizza oven! And not that I'm complaining, but I don't remember you ever staying up this late by choice before. Definitely not after being out all day. Who are you, and where'd you leave the real Sara? Not at any of her favorite haunts. I checked."

"I ran into Samantha."

Teddy adjusted his glasses. "The fox from the Roller-Cade? If you were a guy, I would be so jealous right now! Did she mention me?"

"Yeah," Sara said. A casual reference to 'your friend' was still a mention, wasn't it? "We sure made an impression," She added, more honestly.

In his quest to make it back to his feet, Teddy finally noticed the diary on the floor. He picked it up by one corner and let it dangle. "You'd think with a cover like this, there'd be something dirty inside."

"We went half on it. It's a diary." _Stating the obvious as always, Sara..._

"And you were, what, trying to hide it under your mattress so I wouldn't see it? I think you misunderstood. It goes here," He tapped the spot between the covers and the bed frame, "Not down here, with all the dust bunnies." He pointed under the bed. "It's a crappy enough hiding spot done properly. But shoving it under the bed is like, not even trying."

"Why would I be hiding it? It's not like there's... hey, wait!"

Teddy pulled a pen out of his vest pocket and began to write.

"What are you doing?"

"Recording my valiant deeds and amazing sexual prowess for all time."

"Sam specifically said no lying."

Sara hadn't meant that as a joke or an insult, but Teddy must have taken it as both. He guffawed so loudly, she thought he'd wake her grandfather.

ooo

That was how it started; not so much a record as a public bathroom wall where Teddy, Samantha, and Sara scribbled notes just as much for each other as themselves. The page that was exposed as the book hung between floors, for instance, bared two different inks and two different styles: Samantha's tilted, jagged writing, done very fast in red pen, and Teddy's small print, all-capital, in black. This particular page was an argument. Teddy pleaded with Samantha for a date, Samantha turned him down. They hadn't seen each other at all since the skating rink when the conversation took place, dominating the journal for nearly a month. Even so, Teddy should have known Samantha was not the type of girl to fall for a boy every bit as loud as she was.

ooo

"No, no, a thousand times no," Samantha muttered, writing something less dramatic but similar in content in the journal. "What's a nice girl like you doing with a nebbish like that?"

Sara thought of a little boy with a broken leg, sitting on the sidewalk with a blank look of confusion, and felt a sting that was something like anger, only it wasn't directed at Samantha, Teddy, or anyone in particular, and it was over before it started. She stretched out on her sleeping bag, wondering what cassette they should listen to next. Summer had gone so fast. In a few more days, they'd be in school again. No more staying up late then... not that she'd ever stayed up late before she met Samantha, summer or no. Late would mean something else. Just a little longer, and it'd be getting dark before it was even night. It was dark and night now, and through the beaded curtains, there was a soapy ring around the moon.

"I had a funny dream last night. I think I'll write about that next. Why haven't you written anything yet?"

Sara started to say she had nothing to write, but that was not precisely true. Sometimes she had nothing to write. More often, she had nothing to write that she wanted anyone else to read. "What was your dream about?"

"I don't remember. I only know it was funny because I woke up laughing."

"Then how are you going to write it down?"

"I didn't say I was going to write the dream down. I said I was going to write about it. That's not the same thing." Samantha leaned to the mirror, noting a smudge of mascara under one of her eyelids. Frowning, she rubbed it with her pinkie. It didn't remove the spot. It just streaked it. "Why don't you ever wear makeup?"

"It breaks my face out. Even the stuff that's supposed to be hypo-allergenic. That figures, doesn't it?"

Samantha dabbed her fingers in an open jar of cold cream and wiped them over the ruined eye. It looked a lot like the viscous medicine Sara used on her sunburns, now completely faded. Samantha wiped the cream away with a tissue. The difference was so startling, it was as if that eye had changed color. Samantha regarded it for a moment, then picked up her eyeliner to even it out. Sara didn't know why she wasn't just taking all the makeup off, this late.

"Do you want to try some of mine?"

"Huh?"

"This." She held out the eyeliner. "It's name-brand. Maybe it won't hurt you."

This might not be the best idea. On top of her allergies, Sara's complexion didn't favor makeup. It didn't enhance her natural beauty, like makeup was supposed to; just her natural gauntness. Eyeliner and eyeshadow cast deep black around her eyes, and lipstick, no matter how subtle, gave her lips unnatural brightness, resulting not so much the overall look of a model as the Phantom of the Opera. But like the Roller-Cade, what Sara said was "why not?" even though she'd just gone over every reason why not.

Two hours later, Samantha admired her handiwork and said, "You're adorable! Come on. We have to show you off somewhere!"

"I don't think anything is open right now..."

"Oh, we'll find something!"

Sara watched Samantha pick her keys from her nightstand in consternation. She couldn't imagine herself looking 'adorable,' but Samantha didn't let her check the mirror. Assuming Sara would just take her word for it, she hooked her arm around her waist and led her to her Volkswagen, where the old teddy bear now held the seat of honor in the rear windshield.

Sara was right, though. Haven was too big to be considered a town, like the neighboring Pinehurst and Crystal Lake, but it was still too small for anything to be open after hours. Samantha drover her past storefront after vacant, shadowy storefront, the only light in the world coming from the street lamps overhead and the beater-car's headlights. There weren't any other cars that Sara could see.

"Isn't there even a restaurant where we could get some coffee?" Samantha didn't expect Sara to answer, because she already knew there wasn't.

"There's a McDonald's down by the river," Sara said.

"That's all the way across town!"

"Then we should go back. You can fix my face again tomorrow, if it isn't covered in blisters."

Samantha didn't listen. Instead, she drove further and further away from Distant Meadows, through shops that were not just vacant but abandoned, and alleyways occupied only by garbage cans and rats. Sara suddenly wondered in a detached and unafraid manner if Samantha were a safe person to be with in a place like this. Sara wouldn't have called herself trusting, but she was something that looked like it: she assumed nobody would bother hurting her, since she wasn't influential, important, or in any way worth the effort. Samantha seemed genuinely frustrated, though, so it wasn't likely she was secretly a serial killer. Sara still couldn't understand why she wouldn't turn around and go home. She could've driven to the offending McDonald's and back in the amount of time she'd spent wandering. Wasn't this whole mess about makeup?

"No, really. Let's go back."

"I would," Samantha sighed, "If I wasn't lost. We'll have to hope we stumble over a gas station so we can ask for directions."

"I live here."

"Do you know the way back?"

"No. That's the thing I can't believe." It was true. Sara spent most of her time staring out the window and daydreaming when her grandfather drove her anywhere. She could remember the way to the pharmacy, and by logic, anywhere on the same street, but any place she visited too infrequently, anywhere too far out of town...

The front wheel thunked in a pothole. They were in another addition, one Sara hadn't seen before. Very tall, very old houses towered on either side of the narrow road, so slight even the Volkswagen had to cross the center line to avoid the curb. Weathered wood, yellow, grimy glass, falling-down shingles as far down the street as Sara could see. How had the garage sale woman described Crystal Lake? _There's something old about that lake, older than the land around it._ That was how the houses felt. Older than the ground they sat on. Sara tried to see where the road ended, the pinprick on the horizon...

"Stop the car!" She said.

"What?"

Samantha, thinking there was some obstacle in the road she couldn't see, slammed on her brakes. As soon as the car came to a complete stop, however, Sara darted out the door and into the dark street. Up the stairs of a house, through its cracked-open door...

And froze there.

"I just had the strangest feeling," Sara said, when Samantha caught up. "Like... I passed myself on the stairs..."

"Is that why you got out of the car?" Samantha asked. Sara had expected a 'what the hell were you thinking?', but Samantha wasn't angry or even confused. She was only curious. Then again, she had plucked a complete stranger off a bench to dance with. "Maybe the house is haunted. I don't believe in ghosts, but that's only because I've never seen one."

"I think I might have."

Sara finally got herself out of the doorway. She climbed the stairs, lingering in her distorted feeling of doing something horribly backwards. Beneath her feet, wisps curled. Mist, inside the house? It was probably being fumigated. This looked like the sort of house that had problems with termites or cockroaches. But it didn't smell poisonous. It was even pleasant. Where was it coming from? Why were so many lights on, even though nobody was here? Was she just imagining things when she thought she was a slight, dark figure duck inside? For that was why she'd stopped the car, why she'd jumped out; to find that shadow's owner.

The distortion became staggering, or maybe that was just her footsteps. Her heel grazed the edge of a step and she almost tripped. She'd thought Samantha was right behind her, but couldn't feel or see her. She grabbed the bannister, the air before her becoming as misty as the staircase beneath her.

Then everything went white, and she clutched her chest as she sank to the stairs, thinking that she couldn't let herself fall, that she hadn't even fallen down stairs when she was a toddler, that it had to be painful-

ooo

It's getting so bad I'm hallucinating, Sara thought, as she woke up on the grimy houses's rickety front porch, her head in Samantha's lap. Had she actually gone in at all, or had she just dropped at the front door? But when she heard another voice, saying,

"-Can get you there, easily. Do you know where the McDonald's is? It's in the same area."

Sara tried to sit. "I'm all right," She looked around. "As all right as I ever am, I mean."

Her vision came into focus. Samantha was taking her arm, helping her up; help she needed, as Sara felt as steady as if she were wearing ballet shoes. In front of her was a boy she didn't recognize. Her first impression was tall, her second was skinny, and her third was innocent; he looked so sheepishly horrified, she instantly felt guilty for worrying him, whoever he was.

Holding Sara's other arm was Teddy.

"It is you!" She said. "I thought I saw you. I tried to go after you..."

"This isn't the nicest part of town," Teddy said. "And when I say it's not the nicest part of town, I mean an up-and-coming artist was murdered three houses down. What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"

"We were lost." Sara's eyes were clearing, but her head was still as misty as the staircase. She had to lean on him. "What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"

"Oh, wait until you see it!" The tall boy chimed in. "We're building..."

"Shh! Jimbo!" Teddy glared as he spoke.

"But..."

"I heard someone on the stairs," Teddy said to Sara, over Jim's protests. "But when I came up to see who it was, I, uh, I didn't know. That's, you look... you-ish, but not, you know what I mean? Never mind. I don't know what I mean. I'm not thinking straight right now. I thought you couldn't wear makeup."

Sara's reaction surprised her. She laughed. This wasn't the nervous little schoolgirl giggle that was normally all she could muster; in fact, the only time it happened before was when Samantha had taken her skating.

"Mission accomplished," She said.

Samantha began to laugh, too, while Teddy and Jim glanced at each other in confusion.

"Are we going to the hospital, or what?" Jim asked.

Sara snorted. She tried to stop laughing, but she had a lot of trouble. "If I went to the hospital every time I passed out, I'd be there twice a day, at least. On the other hand, if you can get us back to Distant Meadows from here, that would be a real help."

"No problem," Teddy said.

Samantha carefully helped Sara to the car. As they left, Sara saw Jim glance at the house, and overheard:

"I'm going to lock up the basement. That's expensive, what we've got in there. Why didn't you want them to see it?"

"See it? Did you see them?" Teddy nodded in their direction, and Sara was stunned to realize she was included. "Jimbo, you're hopeless. You don't talk to girls like that about things like our project. No matter what you say, what they hear is 'nerd.'"

He wrote nothing of it in the diary, which he knew Sara and Samantha would read, but it didn't take Sara long to figure out what kind of 'project' he was talking about. Jim's worry about their 'expensive' equipment, the cool basement lab, the smoke she'd seen on the floor; either they were making dope, or they were smoking it while they built a computer. And Teddy would not have thought making dope was too nerdy to discuss with girls like them.

As they filed into the tiny car, a tight fit for all four of them, Teddy located the bear in the window. He turned it over in his hands, then sat it on his shoulder, grinning. "So, wanna give Teddy Bear a kiss?"

ooo

Sara fell asleep in her makeup, but when she woke up in it the next morning, there was no damage to report. She'd always thought there was no real difference between brand and off-brand. In this case, she was happy to be wrong. Samantha was still asleep, flung over the sofa in a pair of lacy blue pajama bottoms and a The Who concert T-shirt. The diary sat on the coffee table beside her.

Sara picked it up, and regarding it a moment, also took the pen beside it.

ooo

For a year or so, all three of them kept up this correspondence. Then, slowly, the others dropped off. First, their entries became more infrequent. To Sara's surprise, Samantha was the first one whose severe handwriting vanished completely. The journal had been her idea, after all. Teddy didn't last long after Samantha dropped out. That was when Sara, the last person to adopt Samantha's funny little game, found herself the only player standing. It was much the same when they died. The powerful Samantha, gone first. Teddy not long after. By the time Sara was ready to run down the stairs of the two-story vacation home, screaming for help, there was no help left to find. The frailest was the last to go. She was found with an axe buried in her chest. She'd found someone who thought she was worth the effort. The final entry of her diary had been written that very morning, on a lazy dock over Crystal Lake, where Samantha always wanted to go.

But what of her first entry, the one that she made after waking up in eyeliner?

It sat with all the others between floors in the house where she and Teddy died, sandwiched between arguments in red and black ink and a few notes jotted on the docks. It wasn't a long entry. It said simply:

_I'm not afraid of scraping my knee anymore. I've found something scarier._

That might have been just the sort of memorable thing Samantha had been looking for. Sadly, even after they'd dragged Samantha's body from the bottom of the lake, the last of the friends to be discovered, the journal remained wedged between floors, unread.

So it remains to this day.

THE END


End file.
